"Development is a difficult endeavor in any environment, much more so in places such as Myanmar with its "perfect storm" of extreme poverty, international sanctions, political repression, and human rights violations, with concomitant conflicts within development organizations over norms and policies. This book examines how to effect successful development interventions in Myanmar. The author points out how practitioners have questioned universal economic prescriptions for development in ways that have not questioned the normative foundations behind their work. Ware does not argue for a facile moral relativism; he sees Myanmar as an egregious violator of human rights. He does call for "context sensitivity" to help organizations adapt their values to better meet the needs of client populations. Through fieldwork and an extensive series of interviews, Ware brings into focus key issues of perception and practice that are intrinsic to the development enterprise"--Supplied by publisher.

This is the account of the 2010 San Jose mine rescue in Chile, after one of the longest human entrapments in history. With his coveted "rescue pass," the author was permitted access far past the police perimeter. It would be seventeen long days before the miners were discovered alive and the world press descended. It would be another fifty-two days before the miners were all successfully rescued. For eight weeks, the author conducted interviews with families, rescue workers, the mine psychologist, drill operators, scientists, and the architects of the rescue operation. He reported from an improvised office on the mountainside that was the nerve center of the rescue operation, in a makeshift container. Far below, families and loved ones lived in a cluster of tents known as Camp Hope. While the men were still underground, the author interviewed them via a crude telephone; he helped send vital supplies to them via the "paloma" (pigeon). And when the first miners were rescued on October 13, he had the first media contact with the recently freed men in a series of interviews from inside the field hospital. The book reads like a thriller, toggling between the dramatic chaos below ground as the men realized that their escape routes were blocked and that their shelter held only enough rations for ten men to survive seventy-two hours; and the desperate rescue efforts aboveground, the massive campaign from the top level of the Chilean government to enlist and unite brilliant minds from around the world in the San Jose rescue effort. In never before revealed detail, the author tells a story of the improbable survival of the miners, trapped some 2,200 feet underground for sixty-nine days. He also chronicles what had to go right, an impossibly long list, to rescue them all alive. The death-defying rescue demanded endurance, ingenuity, and most of all, unified fronts above and below ground. To be sure, none of this came easily. Based on more than 110 interviews with the miners, their families, and the rescue team, this account combines an eye for detail and dialogue with the remarkable human interest story of these miners struggling to survive in a savage environment.

Published in association with the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW this major study breaks new ground in exploring the effectiveness and accessibility of procedures for protecting the rights of individuals to equality and freedom from discrimination on the grounds of race, sex and disability. The enforcement of Australian federal anti-discrimination laws has encountered constitutional limitations. Because federal tribunals are unable to make binding decisions, in 2000 enforcement of federal discrimination matters was moved from a tribunal (the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) to the federal courts. The study examines how the move from a specialist tribunal to the federal courts affected enforcement of federal anti-discrimination law. Drawing on statistical data, analysis of reported cases and interviews with parties and their advisors under both the 'old' and 'new' systems, it investigates the impact of the change in terms of: specialist versus generalist decision-making relatively informal versus formal procedures a regime in which each party bears their own costs versus one in which the loser pays the winner's costs The study traces the impact of these changes on the decisions made by complainants about whether (and where) to bring a complaint, whether to settle their cases or proceed to litigation, and on decisions made by respondents about whether to defend or settle a case. The enforcement process in federal discrimination matters was found to erect significant barriers to individuals seeking to pursue their claims in this area.